War Comes in a Solitary Moment : Families: Residents of East Los Angeles share concerns for their children serving in the Middle East.

Rachel Reyes was alone Wednesday afternoon in her small wood-frame house on La Verne Avenue when the telephone rang. Her husband, Steve, was calling from his job at a paint factory.

“It’s started,” was all he said.

And so it had happened: After months of nervous waiting, the Persian Gulf war had come to La Verne Avenue in East Los Angeles. This sliver of the city--a working-class barrio sandwiched between Whittier and Olympic boulevards--has four of its sons deployed with U.S. units in the Middle East. Two other young men from the block also are in the military, but they have not been shipped to the gulf.

Her 20-year-old son, Timothy, is a Navy SEAL stationed aboard the aircraft carrier Saratoga in the Red Sea. She had thought that she would be ready for the outbreak of war. On Tuesday night, as the deadline for Iraq to withdraw its forces from Kuwait passed without incident, she had been surrounded by friends and neighbors. They chatted amiably with one another, offering support--comrades in waiting.

But when the moment finally came, she was alone. At first, she would recall, she couldn’t sit down. She either walked from room to room or waited for the phone to ring. When it did, the conversation turned to her son and she would inevitably start to sob.

She shied away from the radio in the dining room and the giant Quasar television set in the living room. “I’ve got to keep busy,” she said, “or I’ll go crazy.” So she started to cook. In a few minutes, the home smelled of chorizo and frijoles . Visitors would be coming, she reasoned, and they would have to eat something.

But the cooking and the telephone calls and the subsequent commotion of visitors could not drive away the question: Would her son Timmy be safe?

Four doors up the street, William Martinez’s mother was asking a similar question.

Maria Martinez, who speaks little English, was said by her neighbors to be closely following any mention of the 82nd Airborne Division, to which her 20-year-old son is assigned. But she also was keeping to herself this day.

“ La senora esta bien “ was all the neighbors would say.

For Martinez and the other mothers of soldiers and sailors, the Reyes home has served as something of a headquarters during Operation Desert Shield. The La Verne mothers would visit the Reyes home to trade information or just comfort one another, sharing letters and fears. The house was easy to spot--it’s the one with a yellow bow on the front door and a giant U.S. flag and Navy SEAL banner hoisted from the roof.

Irene Yracheta, whose son is also in the 82nd Airborne Division, frequently took time away from the 3rd Street hamburger stand where she works to visit. And the mother of Manuel Castro, a 23-year-old sailor in the gulf, also paid visits to pass along what she had heard about latest developments. Dela Jean Villarreal, whose 21-year-old Marine son is stationed on Okinawa, had sat with Reyes on Tuesday night when the deadline for an Iraqi withdrawal passed.

On Wednesday, though, Reyes was alone in the first hard moments. She prayed for her son’s safety, prayers that she believes have been answered before.

Timmy Reyes, his parents said, was aboard a ferry that capsized Dec. 22 in rough waters off the Israeli port of Haifa. Twenty-one sailors assigned to the Saratoga were killed.

“We were talking to him on the phone and you could hear his friends in the background, saying ‘Hurry up. The ferry’s leaving,’ ” his sister Stephanie, 22, said.

News of the incident distressed the Reyes family--including father Steve and older son Steve Jr.--and they turned to their neighbors for support. It was on Christmas, three days later, that they finally learned he was safe.

A normally outgoing woman with a quick smile, Rachel Reyes had vowed to visitors that she would keep the a stiff upper lip when the war came. After all, she reminded them, she was the woman who stared down anti-war protesters at the Chicano moratorium march in August.

She growled at protesters, telling them that they should support the U.S. forces sent to the Middle East. A brother had been killed in Korea; other relatives served in Vietnam, she proudly told them.

But the bravado of that day melted into tears as President Bush appeared on TV to confirm that the war was on in Iraq.

She put her head in her hands and softly sobbed.

As the President was ending his 12-minute speech, she continued to watch the TV and uttered a few words, speaking in her own way on behalf of every parent and spouse with a loved one in the gulf.

“ . . . When the troops we’ve sent in finish their work, I’m determined to bring them home as soon as possible . . , “ the President said.

“Thank God,” she murmured.

“May God bless each and every one of them (in the Gulf) . . . “

“Yes, God bless them all,” she said.